An example of this was provided yesterday in the Flyers' visit to racehorse country. They were defensively sloppy and offensively out of synch and trailing by two goals to the Carolina Hurricanes. The temptation: Gamble, gamble, gamble.

But these days, as they did in their run to the Eastern Conference regular season title last spring, the Flyers are playing it safe rather than looking sorry.

Funny how that keeps paying off.

"We've got our team on the same page and our players are getting rewarded," Flyers coach Bill Barber said after a come-from-behind 4-3 victory over the Hurricanes. "We're not going to have high-scoring guys, where you're going to see them in the Top 20 (scoring) rankings. I don't believe that can happen, because of the way we have to play to win. The bottom line is we have to find ways to win. That cuts down on our guys' production, but we have to win by playing the same way."

The Flyers (25-15-9-1, 60 points) were waved through to this fourth straight win because of a tremendous goal by burgeoning star Simon Gagne.

Taking a nice pass from Eric Desjardins, Gagne had defender Glen Wesley all over him, yet still fired a sharp-angled backhander past Arturs Irbe for the winning goal at 10:08 of the third period.It was Gagne's third gamewinner in the past four games, and offered further proof to his older teammates that they have a special player developing in their midst.

"He's getting better and better every game," Desjardins said of Gagne, who now leads the team with 22 goals and 40 points. "He's what we need. He's a top forward in the league."

Back in the days when Eric Lindros and John LeClair rode herd through the scoring rankings for this club, impressive individual production was never a need. Now the Flyers don't have one player near the benchmark of a point per game. What they have instead are several players contributing consistently in a timely fashion.

What they have instead is a team that's playing together.

Barber pointed to this triumph over Carolina (21-19-6-2), which raises the Flyers' record to 13-3-5-1 since he took over as head coach on Dec. 10, as a prime example of that stay-the-course philosophy.

Inspired play by Hurricanes center Rod Brind'Amour and two goals by Jeff O'Neill - coupled with two key defensive errors by the Flyers' Chris McAllister - had spotted the Canes a 3-1 lead in the second. But the Flyers responded by tightening up defensively rather than race down the ice to try to create offense.

Before a sellout Canes crowd (now, there's an upset) knew what was happening in front of it, Paul Ranheim was taking advantage of a terrible giveaway in the corner by Irbe. Ranheim's 90-degree backhander caught a corner for a shorthanded goal and cut the lead to 3-2 at 7:05 of the second. Then Peter White gained position and tipped home a Chris Therien point drive, and it was tied after two.

Gagne's subsequent goal would give them the victory, but the way the Flyers settled themselves down in the second period gave them the chance to win.

"When we were down 3-1, we knew we weren't playing well," said Ranheim. "But there wasn't any panic. We didn't make it worse for ourselves by panicking."

Instead, the Flyers continued to make things much tougher for themselves in what is again a tight Atlantic Division race with New Jersey. That 7-1 loss to the Devils that appeared to have the potential of sending them spinning into a midseason abyss on Jan. 18has been paved over by four straight wins as the Flyers prepare to play the Washington Capitals this afternoon.

"We're trying to play the same way all the time, no matter what the score is," said Desjardins. "I don't think we were doing that earlier (in the season), because we thought everything was going to be easy because of the way we ended last season. We know we can't do that.